


Observe, Control, Delete

by Chryse



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Love, M/M, Major Character Injury, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, References to Drugs, Rehabilitation, season 3 compliant/post S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:55:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1521851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chryse/pseuds/Chryse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock woke up in the hospital, again, alone, again, with the dullness of morphine lying over him like a smothering blanket, again, he had to close his eyes for a long, long moment. But then he gritted his teeth and reached to punch down the level on his PCA. If the only thing he could control was how much narcotic was being dumped into his system, then by God he would control it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Observe, Control, Delete

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written anything short before, but I had this idea knocking around my head since the mention of OCD in HLV. I probably never would have written it, only I got most of the way through my long fic and realized I had written my plot into a corner, so I thought I would give my subconscious a few days to come up with something and it kicked this out instead.  
> Since I'm only familiar with the American system for classifying mental illness (the DSM) that's what is referenced here, although at least one term (pervasive developmental disorder) is already out of date--as is Asperger's under the latest edition; it's all lumped under "autism spectrum disorders" now.

“It’s getting worse,” Mummy said. “It’s taking ages to get out of the house in the morning. We’re having to get up earlier and earlier to make it to school on time. And the meals—well, it was bad enough before, you can imagine.”

“Yes,” Dr. Gupta said, looking at the skinny wild-haired boy scowling in his chair.

“The thing is, he’ll be off to boarding school in a year. We’ve simply got to get this nipped in the bud before then.”

“Well, obsessive-compulsive disorder in children—“

“Oh lovely, another diagnosis,” Sherlock interrupted rudely. “Can you put it on some sort of plaque? Mycroft can have a row of school prizes and I can have a row of pathologies.”

Dr. Gupta regarded him calmly. “Are you agreeing with this one?”

Sherlock glared. Most of his previous diagnoses _had_ been rubbish. Attention-deficit disorder was simply ridiculous; he had no trouble whatsoever paying attention when something was worthwhile. And the medicine they gave him for it made it impossible to eat or sleep, so that was hardly his fault, and besides it made the twitching and blinking much worse—although thankfully he’d outgrown the tics as Dr. Gupta had said he would, so at least she’d been right about something. The worst had been PDD-NOS. “I’m not _delayed,”_ he’d said furiously.

“Your social skills certainly are,” Dr. Gupta had responded, unperturbed, “and ‘Not Otherwise Specified’ might as well be your personal motto.”

“Of course I don’t agree with it,” Sherlock said now. “’Compulsion’ by definition means being forced to do something. Nothing is forcing me to do anything. As if they could.”

“Sherlock,” Mummy said with exasperation, “We can’t go anywhere on clear nights because you have to stop and count every star you see.”

“Why do you count the stars?” Dr. Gupta said interestedly.

Sherlock squirmed slightly. “Because no one knows how many there are. They could be _infinite_.”

“Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“How could it not?” Just the thought of infinity made Sherlock feel terrified, unmoored. Didn’t it everyone? That was why people invented the concept of God, or so he’d always assumed.

“Mmmm,” Dr. Gupta said. She turned back to Mummy. “The cornerstone of treatment is cognitive-behavior therapy, but obviously that requires a cooperative subject. There is a place for medication, but it’s second-line at best, and I think we can all agree that medication is not an avenue we’d really like to pursue again.”

“God no,” Mummy said with a shudder. “We’ll take a little time to think it over. Thank you, Doctor.”

Sherlock was silent and sulky until they were almost home, at which point he announced suddenly, “I want to go to the library.”

“All right,” his mother agreed readily. Mummy was usually amenable to taking him to the library. The librarians were the only people he encountered regularly who actually liked Sherlock, once they had got past that silly matter of not wanting to let him check out adult books. Sherlock loved the library, the vast straightforward orderliness of it—although privately he thought the Dewey Decimal System could stand a bit of improving, a task he might take on someday when he had a bit of free time.

Thirty minutes later Sherlock found his mother browsing in the technical periodicals. “I’m ready,” he announced, peering over a teetering tower of books.

Mummy looked at the top one: _Anxiety Disorders in Adults._ “You’re not an adult.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I’m hardly a typical child, either.”

Back at home, Sherlock shut himself in his room to research. After an hour or so, he was frowning harder than ever. He had thought of his increasingly elaborate rituals—routines, he called them to himself—as a way to gain some tiny measure of control over his life, a life in which he had depressingly little power normally. But according to his reading, the routines controlled _him_. Could that be true? Could his brilliant mind, the one bit of himself he trusted, be going rogue? Was part of it staging some sort of coup?

“Sherlock! Time to eat!” his mother called.

Sherlock decided to perform an experiment. He went to the washroom and, instead of scrubbing each finger with soap for precisely twenty seconds, gave his hands the sort of cursory rinse he knew most boys his age favored. Then he tried to go downstairs. He couldn’t. The very thought of trying to eat his food like this made his heart pound uncomfortably. Well, Sherlock though crossly as he returned to the basin, this would never do.

“I want to go to CBT,” he announced halfway through dinner, after he judged his father had meandered on about his work long enough.

Mummy looked over at his plate, on which Sherlock had arranged individual grains of rice in a complicated mathematical progression. “Good,” she said. “I’ll call tomorrow.” Then, unable to help herself, she added, “That one’s wrong—it should be eighteen.”

 

Sherlock could never be honestly described as a cooperative subject—Sherlock was about as cooperative as a cat—but he was a highly motivated subject, and he was firmly convinced that if something could be done with the human mind, then he could do it. By the time he left for boarding school he was essentially routine-free, although he would always be persnickety about his personal hygiene and clothing and eating habits. He had also discovered another useful tool for dealing with anxieties too big to control: he either ignored or deleted them. Once he managed to forget everything he knew about the universe, for example, stars no longer troubled him. Puberty required both ignoring _and_ deleting, but God knew he didn’t want to turn into a ravening slave to hormones like the other boys at school, so it was worth it. When he went to university, there were a few occasions where he felt…something…some stirring of interest, but that was just biology, silly physical stuff that would be a distraction. Delete. He would not admit, even to himself, that there was a part of him that wanted, and a larger part of him that found wanting deeply frightening.

By university Sherlock had gone through a few more diagnoses; he was willing to admit there was a bit of truth to bipolar disorder, although he preferred the older term manic-depression, and “high-functioning sociopath” had a pleasantly scary ring to it. Still, as long as he had something to engage him, both the depression and anxiety were mostly kept at bay. But then university got boring, and the larger world with its boring people and boring jobs and lack of anything _remotely interesting_ loomed with its terrifying stultifying boringness, and then came the drugs. And that was a very bad time indeed. Because the drugs were even worse than the routines: they took control of him much more quickly, and were much more difficult to shake.

 

“You seem distracted today,” Simon said. Simon was Sherlock’s therapist and he had obviously been up a bit too late last night, although Sherlock couldn’t really be arsed to deduce why, and anyway they’d established some ground rules about that sort of thing.

“My roommate is an idiot,” Sherlock said.

“Ah,” Simon said. “Something in particular?”

“He’s a slob. It’s bad enough that I have to live with him, but he criticizes the way I keep my things as though I’m the one with the problem.”

“His criticism bothers you?” There was a barely suppressed note of shock in Simon’s voice.

“No. Of course not. Well…he said I was ‘anal’, that the way I keep my clothes is ridiculous, that I’m…he says I have OCD.”

“What do you think?”

“I _don’t._ I did have, when I was a child, but I went to CBT and then it was fine. I made it fine. But now he’s got me thinking that maybe it’s come back now I’m in rehab.” Sherlock realized he was fidgeting. He tried to stop, but he felt restless all the time these days, and it was hard to be still.

“What do you think?” Simon asked again.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. At least Simon knew better than to ask how he _felt_. “I was wondering if it could be related to my Axis II diagnosis.” One upside to this admission: that detested PDD had been discarded in favor of Asperger’s syndrome, which Sherlock found much more to his liking.

“Ah.” Simon nodded. “That’s certainly possible. I suppose it really comes down to how you feel about it—sorry, what you think about it. The order you keep in your room: is that your way of asserting control, or does it control you?”

Sherlock imagined his idiot flatmate deliberately scrambling his clothes in some sort of idiot tantrum. He felt…annoyed. Not panicked. “I control it,” he said, pleased. Then he thought of something else. “But eating—that might be different. I do have some routines I have to follow there.”

“And why do you think that is?”

“Because the food is horrible and I hate eating it.”

“Then why do you eat it?”

“You know why. Because if I don’t I get the tube. I hate the tube.”

“The nasogastric feeds, you mean? Why do you hate them?”

Sherlock lost the little patience he had. “Why wouldn’t I hate them?” he shouted, flinging himself backward so hard he sent the chair skidding.

“Some people hate the sensation of something in their throat. Some people don’t like having the NG tube inserted because it triggers their gag reflex. Why do you hate it?”

It was a rational question. Sherlock forced himself to calm down, breathe, think it through. “I hate it because I don’t have any control over it. It just dumps food in my stomach and then I feel sick.”

“So, as I recall,” Simon said, “you negotiated exactly how many calories a day you needed to eat to avoid the feeds and you have met or exceeded that goal every day. Even though you hate the food here.”

“Yes.”

“Does that affect your rituals?”

“Routines,” Sherlock corrected automatically. He thought it over. “Yes,” he said, almost surprised. “I work out how much I have to eat. I count the bites. I alternate the foods I hate the most with ones that are tolerable.”

“So you don’t have control over determining the amount of food you have to eat,” Simon said, “but you can control how you eat it.”

Sherlock blinked at his therapist. Much as he hated to admit it, the man was moderately clever. And much as he hated to admit it even more, he had actually made Sherlock feel better. Oh God, he was starting to think about _feeling._

“There’s a wonderful parallel to be drawn with drug use here, but I’m sure you don’t need me to spell it out. I wonder if a lack of control is something that has been an issue in your life before,” Simon mused, as though thinking aloud. “I see your mother and brother are coming for a session later this week, maybe that would be a topic worth raising?”

Sherlock went small in his chair, head down. He looked at his fingers, fidgeting frantically. He looked away at the books on the bookshelf and thought longingly of arranging them by Dewey Decimal System. He made himself think about how he _felt._

Sherlock took a deep breath. He made himself sit up straight. He made his hands still. “Yes,” he said. “I think it would.”

 

After, Sherlock saved a few of the things he had learned talking to Simon, and deleted the rest of rehab. Like most things he deleted it wasn’t gone permanently, of course; he just parked it in a distant wing of his mind palace with a framed sign on the door to remind him: _Rehab was horrid, don’t get addicted again._

Mostly he didn’t need it though. Once he was clean Lestrade let him work on really interesting cases, and he even started getting a few paying clients, which meant that he could think about getting his own real flat and out of the dull little horror Mycroft was subsidizing. Which was how he met John Watson, and John turned out to be the best thing of all. Sherlock had never had a friend before—he’d rather ruthlessly deleted ever wanting one—and while he’d gotten a lot better at charming people when he felt like it, having someone actually _like_ him was a delightfully novel pleasure. Plus, John was interesting, game for anything, never tried to control Sherlock unless one counted the occasional demand to clean up his damn mess, and was an excellent shot. In short, he was an enormous asset.

John lived with Sherlock for nearly two years. It was the best time of Sherlock’s life. If there were moments, sometimes, when he found himself wondering what it would be like to have _more_ , he always ruthlessly pushed the thought away. John was straight, Sherlock wasn’t interested, sex was messy, caring was not an advantage, end of story. He had John as a friend and that was more than enough. It _was_.

But then came Moriarty and the two years away. And while that wasn’t all bad—it was an amazing adventure, and for the first time Mycroft treated him as an equal, and Sherlock would never admit even to himself how much he cared about that—it was a long two years. There were times, so many times, when he thought about John and longed desperately to hear his voice, but this was to keep John safe, and John would be there when he got back.

The routines crept back in, a little, just to keep him safe, and sometimes they saved his life. But they weren’t enough in the end. Because John wasn’t there when he got back. And that—well, that took a lot of ignoring and deleting, but. Mary liked him, was willing to share John with him, and John loved her, so Sherlock ignored the misgivings—what the hell did he know about women anyway?—and did everything he could to make John happy.

And so when Mary said, “This wedding planning is killing me. I’m just not very good at this kind of detail-y organizing thing, and God knows John doesn’t give a toss,” Sherlock shut down the part of his mind that whispered _liar_ and said, “Actually, I’m very good at details. I’m a bit OCD, you know,” with a smile to show it was a joke, and Mary smiled back and squeezed his arm and said, “Oh, you’re a love.”

And because Sherlock was, of course, very good at details, the wedding was lovely. It was the aftermath that went spectacularly wrong. And it just kept getting worse, no matter how Sherlock tried. But in the end: Magnussen was gone. Moriarty was gone (for real, this time). John was alive, but he was alone; the life he had thought to have built on a shifting sand of lies, gone too. And Sherlock was alive, but he was broken. Broken rather badly, as it turned out.

 

When Sherlock woke up in the hospital, again, alone, again, with the dullness of morphine lying over him like a smothering blanket, _again,_ he had to close his eyes for a long, long moment. But then he gritted his teeth and reached to punch down the level on his PCA. If the only thing he could control was how much narcotic was being dumped into his system, then by God he would control it.

Sherlock was initially optimistic. He’d survived getting shot in the chest and bleeding out into his lung; how much worse could a fall—even one that killed everyone else, even one that broke quite a lot of bones—be? A lot worse, as it turned out. He made it through the first week or so in a haze of morphine and denial, suffering through Mrs. Hudson’s daily visits and Molly and Mycroft and Lestrade dropping by after work. The only person he really wanted to see was John, but the few times John came he was gray and silent and distant, half drowned in his grief.

Sherlock drifted up one day to find Lestrade there, even though it was still daytime, and Lestrade was dressed in a dark suit and tie, which he would normally wear only to court. “Where’s John?” he mumbled.

Lestrade gave Sherlock a you’re-being-selfish look that Sherlock felt he hardly deserved. “The funeral was today, Sherlock.”

Funeral? Mary’s? Sherlock supposed it had to be done; she was still his legal wife, after all, and it was probably easier to have one funeral and move on than have to explain over and over why he hadn’t. Still, John had hated her by the end. At least the arrangements were done with now, so maybe John would be along later. Sherlock closed his eyes again.

When he opened them, he was displeased to find not John but Mycroft. “What are you doing here?”

Mycroft raised one eyebrow, “I came to see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine. When can I get out of here?”

Now Mycroft raised both eyebrows. “You do realize how badly injured you are? I believe the term the orthopedist used was “smithereens”. You were incredibly lucky not to fracture your spine. It’s almost enough to make one believe that old adage about God looking after drunks and fools.”

“Drunks and small children,” Sherlock said, reaching for the morphine pump. This conversation was making him hurt worse.

“Same thing,” Mycroft said and Sherlock pushed the morphine to maximum.

It was beginning to sink in for Sherlock that not only was he not going to be back on his feet in a few weeks but that John was not either, at least not in the metaphorical sense. Still: again, they’d survived Sherlock’s suicide, John’s wife _shooting_ Sherlock, and so on; how much worse could it get?

Then Sherlock went for surgery to repair his shattered hip and pelvis and discovered he hadn’t even scratched the surface of _worse_. He didn’t really wake up until the next day, and he revived to a pain so intense that he couldn’t understand why he’d ever been given morphine before. Why hadn’t they saved it for this?

Sherlock reached out and pushed at the button on the PCA, but it was already up as far as it could go. He lay still, set his jaw, and endured. Mrs. Hudson came and he ignored her. Molly dropped by after work and chattered about some corpse or other until he was ready to scream, finally giving him a little pat on the shoulder that made a fresh bolt of pain shoot through him, leaving him panting through his teeth. “Well, see you later,” she trilled. Sherlock wondered if he had enough strength in his good arm to dismantle the PCA and shoot the whole load straight into his drip—if it killed him, so much the better.

“Hey,” came John’s listless voice, and then, “What’s—“ He leaned over Sherlock and Sherlock heard him punching at the PCA, jostling the bed, and no matter how he gritted his teeth he couldn’t help whimpering. “Stay right there,” John ordered—as if Sherlock had a choice—and strode out to the hall. John did not raise his voice, but the sharp tone of command was clearly audible all the same: “Get that fucking anesthetist on the line right now and get a verbal order to up the lockout on that fucking PCA. Do you hear me? RIGHT NOW.”

John came back and his warm hand took Sherlock’s cold shaking one. “Sherlock,” he said, and now his voice was gentle. “We’re getting you some more morphine. You’re going to feel better in just a minute. Why didn’t you tell anyone you were in so much pain? Just squeeze my hand, all right? Hard as you want. It’s all right.”

Sherlock clenched his teeth and his closed eyes but the horrible whimpering noise kept coming no matter what he did. He couldn’t control it; he couldn’t control anything. The whole universe consisted of nothing but searing agony and John, John whom Sherlock had always thought to be one of the planet’s least observant people, John who had been the only one to see.

“There you go, there you go,” soothed John’s voice, and there was a beeping and the familiar burning in his arm, and then thank God it all went away.

 

A few weeks later Sherlock was transferred to a private rehabilitation facility on the other side of London. He found a certain grim irony in being sent to rehab again, even though it was a completely different type of rehab; his first few days off the morphine certainly had a miserable nauseated familiarity. At the hospital he had at least had Mrs. Hudson’s daily visits—he had thought them tedious at the time, but now of course he missed them—and most nights someone stopping by on their way home. John had gone back to work and seemed even more apathetic that ever when he'd come round, but least seeing him still alive and walking helped to remind Sherlock that he had gone through all of this for a reason.

Now, though, he was too far away for after-work drop-ins. He was alone, really alone in a way he hadn’t been for years, and the pain was a constant torture, and there was absolutely nothing to distract him. After he got a couple of texts along the lines of _kids this weekend_ or _working, hope to get over next Sunday_ Sherlock let his phone go dead. Unable to curl up, he turned his face to the wall. Mrs. Hudson’s scones went stale on his bedside table. He let Mummy’s voice blur into static in his ears.

They put the nasogastric tube in eventually, and even that did not rouse him.

Sunday afternoon eleven days after Sherlock’s transfer, John finally walked into the room. Sherlock was peripherally aware of him even through the fog of his misery, registering a box of tarts _making an effort_ and the slight drag of his foot _still a bit of a limp_ but not really able to care about any of it. There was a pause whilst John took him in.

“Oh no you don’t,” John said suddenly and there was no listlessness to his voice—it was sharp and almost angry. “No. You do not get to do this. Sherlock Holmes, open your eyes and talk to me, you bloody fucking coward.”

_That_ got Sherlock’s attention. He actually opened his eyes. “I’m not a coward!” he said indignantly, voice gone rusty from disuse.

“Yes, you are.” John marched around to the side of the bed and glared down at him. “I’ve been here, remember? You’re scared of the pain and you’re scared you won’t get better and you’ve decided it’s easier to just give up and die. Well, too bad, that’s not fucking on, you already pulled that crap before and you only get to do it once.”

Sherlock was so enraged he tried to sit up. “I might never walk again! How am I supposed to work?”

John shoved the button into Sherlock’s hand so he could raise the head of the bed and be shouted at properly face-to-face. “That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said. There is not a damn thing wrong with your brain and the rest is just transport, isn’t that what you always say? And you’ll walk again if you want to, I’ve seen your chart. Even if you can’t Mycroft will buy you the fanciest fucking wheelchair on the planet and it will probably fucking fly so yes, you will work. You could be working right now if you weren’t lying around feeling sorry for yourself.”

“How?” Sherlock shouted back. “Telepathy?”

“Camera.” John shrugged. “We’ve done it before. You don’t have to go to every crime scene. You don’t even _want_ to go to every crime scene.”

Sherlock glared. Part of him wanted to stay angry—it was a relief to feel anything besides despair, and he recognized dimly that he was more resentful than he’d realized that John didn’t seem to appreciate that he’d done all this for him—but most of him wanted, desperately, to hope.

“I can’t do it by myself,” he said finally, and was relieved to hear that his voice didn’t sound as needy as he’d feared.

“Yeah, I know.” John dropped his gaze and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I’ve just—I had a lot to deal with lately, you know? And I haven’t been here for you like I should. But I am now. As of right now, we’re in this together.”

Sherlock took a deep breath and let a little bubble of happiness float up in his chest. He hadn’t lost everything after all. “Did you bring something to eat?”

“Yeah—Sherlock!”

Sherlock coughed, holding the end of the nasogastric tube at arm’s length so it wouldn’t drip on the bedclothes. “Two thousand calories a day,” he said, dropping the tube to the floor and punching at the pump to turn it off. “Pass it over.”

 

John quit his job. “Extended paid leave,” he claimed when he told Sherlock, but Sherlock knew better; he just hoped Mycroft was paying him enough to keep him comfortable but not so much he felt guilty. Mycroft also bought the camera, a fancy thing with excellent sound and satellite connectivity, so Sherlock could see every detail at a crime scene. The first time they used it was at the site of a bizarre attack on a halal butcher’s shop. Most of the evidence was on the floor, and Sherlock took great pleasure in shouting for John to move the camera every time he inadvertently included a shot of Anderson’s bum bent over the ground. Anderson finally got into the camera and shouted back, and they both had an excellent time.

Sherlock solved the crime in half an hour—“see, even crippled I’m more use than you are, Philip”—and then Lestrade stuck his face into the lens and said, “I’ve got a bunch of stuff piled up I need you to sign. We’re going over to the Yard for John to collect it all, okay?”

“Pointless, my right arm’s in a cast. I’ll sign it later.”

“I need that stuff signed!”

“I’ll forge it for you,” John interceded, swinging the camera around toward his face in a vertigo-inducing swoop. “I’ve gotten pretty good at your signature over the years.”

Sherlock refused to whinge—he was the one who had insisted John go out this morning, even knowing he had his first physiotherapy session that afternoon. So he only said sulkily, “Bring back something for dinner if you’ll be late.” It was ridiculous to ask John to come all the way back to the rehab hospital again and he knew it, but he needed _something_ to look forward to.

Physiotherapy was horrible in every possible way. Sherlock knew the damage that had been done to his body in dreary detail, but knowing it was different from seeing how far he had to go before he would be able even to stand without pain. It was, in addition, excruciating. Worst of all it was tedious—Sherlock almost felt nostalgic for drug rehab, realizing how many horrible exercises he was going to have to force his wretched transport through to get back even a tenth of what he had had before.

Well. Needs must and all that. He would not give John Watson an excuse to call him a coward again, so he set his jaw and suffered through every torturous task the sadistic therapist threw at him until he was spent and shaking. “It’s okay, we’ll try again tomorrow,” the monster said cheerfully as Sherlock struggled desperately to lift his leg.

“No,” Sherlock said through his teeth. He let his foot rest against the table and stared at it. Then he flexed his toes—one of the few things he could manage without pain—one, two, THREE. On THREE he threw every last bit of will he had into it and got his foot up one shaky inch.

“Oh, well done!” the therapist cried enthusiastically. “You did it!”

“Obviously,” Sherlock gritted out. He lay flat on the table, too exhausted and miserable to move. “Don’t say anything else cheery. If you do I won’t be responsible for what I say, and you actually seem to be decent at your horrible job, so I want to stay on your good side.”

Sherlock was so depressed when he was finally moved back into his bed that he pushed the buttons to draw the blinds, turned off all the lights, and lay in the dark feeling sorry for himself. It didn’t count if John wasn’t there, right? He was so worn out that he actually fell asleep. He woke up to John coming into the room, obnoxiously cheerful as he turned on the lights.

“Why are you lying in the dark?” John asked. “It’s not even seven. You didn’t eat already, did—oh.” He looked at Sherlock. “First day of physiotherapy, right.”

Sherlock, caught, looked ashamedly away. John set the bags of food down, went over to him, and pushed the button to raise the head of the bed.

“I’ve been here before, remember?” John said. “Well, not exactly here, the military facilities aren’t as nice as this, I’ll tell you that. But, yeah. Knowing I’d never get my arm back the way it was, never have my old job back—my identity back. But.” He rubbed at Sherlock’s hair, a bit awkwardly. “Worked out pretty well for me in the end, didn’t it?”

Sherlock swallowed and to his horror felt his eyes sting with tears. He had never cried, not once, not even in the worst of the pain and John would think he was a weakling and a coward…

John tugged Sherlock’s head against his side so they could both pretend he did not see. “Let’s see what’s on the telly,” he said, turning it on and flipping around until he found _Top Gear_ , which to Sherlock’s mystification seemed always to be broadcasting somewhere. Sherlock gratefully rested his temple against John’s warmth and closed his eyes to let the traitorous tears trickle out. After a moment John added softly, “Hurts like bloody hell too, doesn’t it?”

Sherlock nodded and felt the hot lump back in his throat. John gently scuffed at his hair, keeping him pressed against him, and Sherlock snaked his good arm around John’s back and clung as best he could. He was desperately grateful for John’s woolly jumper, which surely would soak up the stupid tears. After a while they stopped coming and he sniffled a little, experimentally.

“This bloke doesn’t know a thing about cars,” John said conversationally.

“Neither do you,” Sherlock managed and then John laughed, and it was all right, and he let go, and John hauled the food out of the bags and they ate it, and Sherlock thought maybe, just maybe, he would get through this.

 

OCD turned out to be an asset in physiotherapy. There were many, many times that Sherlock’s strength gave out before a set was finished, but he could no more think of stopping than he could of dancing the cha-cha. He panted a moment, gritted his teeth, and kept going.

“Sherlock,” John said once, a little worriedly, “You do know, don’t you, that if you stop at nine one time that’s not going to be the thing that keeps you from walking again, right?”

“Shut. Up,” Sherlock ground out, and John threw up his hands in surrender.

Sherlock kept his phone on now, because sometimes John would call him late if Lestrade wanted them to take a look at a case. Sherlock always said yes, since otherwise the boredom was stultifying—even typing and reading were difficult with only his left hand. He did notice these jobs only came once a week or so, which was just as well, since he was usually tired and snappish the next day. He slipped up and deduced every therapist and attendant at least once, but strangely they did not seem to hold this against him.

“They like you,” John said, shrugging, after a therapist perplexed Sherlock utterly by saying he was her favorite. “You’re tough.”

“I’m not tough!” Sherlock said in astonishment. No one had ever called him _tough_. Big baby, child, drama queen—not _tough._

“Yes, you are. You take everything they give you and ask for more, and you never moan.”

Now that was patently untrue. “I moan all the time.”

“You moan because you’re in pain. Nobody faults you for that; just looking at you makes me hurt.”

Sherlock Holmes, who had once held his tongue for weeks under torture, had never particularly thought of himself as brave or strong. He had to work hard to conceal how the thought made him glow.

 

Just when Sherlock was starting to get discouraged at his slow progress the cast on his arm came off, and that meant he could play his violin. The forearm fracture had been relatively uncomplicated and Sherlock was happily surprised to find that it worked almost as well as before. Almost. “I need physiotherapy for my arm,” he demanded.

“No, you don’t,” John said. “You’re costing this place a fortune in overtime as it is. Just play your violin and the strength will come back in no time.”

“I _broke_ it!”

“Sherlock,” John said patiently. “You had a non-displaced fracture of the distal radius. We call this a roller-skate fracture, because little girls get it when they fall forward and land on their hands. Your arm is fine. But if you want to, we can start looking at exercises to build up your upper body strength because you’re going to need it when you get to crutches.”

Three weeks later, Sherlock had another surgery. This time, though, when he woke up fuzzy and agonized John was there, and he immediately took Sherlock’s hand.

“All right? Need more morphine?”

“No,” mumbled Sherlock, hurting but happy, wanting to stay awake to feel John holding his hand as long as he could.

The next time Sherlock woke up John was still holding his hand, though Sherlock could tell from the limpness of his grip that he was dozing. Sherlock fumbled groggily for the morphine pump.

“Whazzit?” John asked, sitting up. “Do you need it turned up?”

“No, down.” Sherlock found the pump and stabbed at it clumsily. “I need to do my exercises.”

“You just had major surgery on your leg,” John protested. “You’re supposed to be resting, not exercising.”

“Nothing wrong with my arms,” Sherlock said definitely and then frowned at his arm, which had an IV drip taped to it. “Take this off.”

“I’m not taking it off, that’s the morphine,” John said with what sounded like a lot of suppressed laughter in his voice. “Here, tell you what, you be still and I’ll come around over there and help you sit up.”

Sherlock subsided and John moved around. There was a clatter as John bumped the bedside table and said, “Whoops!”, and more things crashed around, apparently due to John trying to put them back.

Sherlock turned his head to see what was going on and felt a familiar burning in his arm. “You turned up the morphine!”

“Yep,” John said cheerfully. “Now close your eyes and rest like a good boy or I’ll have them put you in restraints.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to argue but the nice heavy feeling was already coming over him, and instead he found himself saying thickly, “Hole my han.”

“Hole your—oh.” A warm strong hand wrapped around Sherlock’s. “Good?”

“Good.”

 

Three days later Sherlock surfaced from another fuzzy dream to find John gone. The spike of anxiety this produced was extremely unpleasant, even though he knew, rationally, that John must be leaving the room at regular intervals to eat and sleep. Still, he sounded churlish even to his own ears when John returned and Sherlock demanded, “Where did you go?”

“Moving my things into Baker Street,” John said, unperturbed. “That’s okay, right? Because you don’t need me for cases right now, and it will be a lot easier to be in town once you go to outpatient therapy.”

“Oh,” Sherlock said, surprised and happy. “No, that’s—of course it’s okay.”

“Good,” John said, sitting down and pulling out a piece of paper. “Because I’ve got a list. Mrs. Hudson packed all your weird experiments into the freezer when she cleaned the fridge after you were hospitalized, but now there’s no room for any actual food in the freezer, which is a problem if I’m going to live there. So I need you to tell me which of these I can bin. Number one: some kind of spleen. I don’t even know if it’s a human spleen, let alone what you were doing with it.”

Sherlock didn’t even remember half the experiments, and he doesn’t give a toss about them as long as John was going to stay, but he still argued every single one, just for the sake of it.

 

Sherlock knew that Baker Street was impossible. Even if he could somehow get up the stairs, the flat was old, with narrow corridors and furniture everywhere and sharp angles. He could never manage it in a wheelchair. So he agreed, with no great grace, to the only viable option, which was Mycroft’s ridiculously oversized house.

Astonishingly, it wasn’t too bad. He had to put up with Mycroft, but he wasn’t around all that much, and it was a small price to pay to be able to sleep and eat when he wanted and not have to account for his calories. Mycroft engaged a van with a lift and a strapping young man who could probably bench-press Sherlock, wheelchair and all, to get him to physio and generally haul him about. Physiotherapy continued to be torture, but John would come to meet him after and they would have lunch, and then sometimes Mark the strapping young man would drive them around to crime scenes or the Yard or Bart’s. Molly was quite taken with Mark, although she was less keen for John to climb up on a chair and point the camera over her shoulder so Sherlock could complain about her autopsy technique.

If they had nothing else on, Sherlock went to hydrotherapy. He had not been very enthusiastic about this at first, having never been much of a swimmer. As a child he’d been fine if he could see the bottom of the pool, but deep water struck him with the same nameless terror as infinite space. It was one of the reasons he had first noticed the Carl Powers case so long ago. But hydrotherapy turned out to be _wonderful_. The first time he let himself be lowered into the water and realized that he could move his legs without pain, he’d almost cried with the bliss of it.

“We’ll have to join a swim club, or something, once you graduate,” John said, smiling down at Sherlock in the water. “Then I’ll swim too.”

On Christmas his parents joined them at Mycroft’s, although his mother still cooked the Christmas dinner. Even John came, somewhat to Sherlock’s surprise; he had thought the previous year’s memories would have sent him fleeing to Harry’s. Everyone was ostentatiously careful to avoid mentioning Mary. Even Sherlock found himself behaving more politely than he could honestly remember.

“Excuse me, Mummy,” Mycroft suddenly announced, when it became clear that their mother was nowhere near ready to serve the pudding yet. “I have to take Sherlock to change his catheter bag.”

Sherlock nearly choked. John, who knew perfectly well that Sherlock hadn’t had a catheter in months, looked up in mild surprise, then said offhandedly, “I’ll let you have the pleasure this time, Mycroft” and returned to his newspaper.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock said as Mycroft bumped him out the door into the garden, “You do know I haven’t had a cigarette since I went into hospital? I’m not particularly keen to revisit the habit.”

“Fine. I’ll leave you here and go behind the garden shed,” Mycroft said with an edge of desperation in his voice. “Just don’t tell Mummy.”

 

Sherlock had a goal, and a goal date, stupidly sentimental though it was; he hadn’t chosen Valentine’s Day for its romantic associations, it just happened to fall at a convenient point in mid-February. By the end of January he had started inventing errands to keep John away from physiotherapy. John did not seem inclined to argue. On a few occasions Sherlock wondered if he suspected what Sherlock had planned, but then he reassured himself: this was John Watson! Least observant person on the planet and all that.

Still, when the big day finally came, and Sherlock hobbled out on his own two feet to meet John in the heart-strewn foyer—leaning heavily on crutches, shaky, wobbly, but undeniably walking—Sherlock looked at his hugely grinning face and knew that he hadn’t been fooling John for a minute. And it didn’t matter anyway, because when he staggered into John's arms John was laughing and hugging him and high-fiving with the therapists, and John—soldier, hero, bravest man Sherlock knew—had tears in his eyes, and he wasn’t even trying to hide them.

 

It was another two more weeks before Sherlock moved back to Baker Street. Sherlock spent the two weeks struggling to master stairs with his crutches—he was developing a permanent ache in the sides of his face from gritting his teeth—and John spent it readying their flat for Sherlock’s return. This set Sherlock’s teeth on edge even worse than the stairs. John took out the rugs, moved the furniture back, repaired loose floorboards, and installed a bar in the bath, all of which left Sherlock feeling panicked and resentful and grateful in equal and confusing measures. He wanted his old life back, of course he did, but after so long he was no longer sure if their old life would fit them anymore. What he really wanted was his old life but with the new John: the John who held his hand, took his camera to crime scenes, hugged him, was _his_.

Mycroft, never one for emotional farewells, went off to Brussels and left a car to take Sherlock home. John insisted on taking a taxi over to Mycroft’s and accompanying him, and then of course Mrs. Hudson greeted them joyfully at the door, and Sherlock stopped on the pavement in horror to say to John accusingly, “You’d better not have Lestrade and Molly stashed up there ready to throw confetti or something.”

“Nope, not today,” John said cheerfully, hefting the violin. “Give me some credit. Here, let me just put this inside and we’ll tackle the stairs, shall we?”

Sherlock had climbed literally hundreds of stairs in the past weeks preparing obsessively for this moment, and still it almost did him in. He had a routine developed and he followed it: first his better leg, then the worse; better, worse; better, worse; rest every three steps, ten breaths, repeat silently _every time it will be easier_ ; repeat. Every set of three stairs took approximately two and a half minutes, but since he had never climbed an actual staircase he got slower as he went along, until even Mrs. Hudson had the good sense to fall silent. Sherlock was so focused on following his routine and not crumpling in an exhausted heap that he was startled to drag his good leg up and realize he had reached the landing.

“Want a hand with that last one?” John asked from behind him and ducked under his shoulder to haul the rest of his weight up. Then he separated the crutches and fitted them to Sherlock’s arms while Sherlock wondered wearily if he could just lower himself out the window in a basket. _Every time it will be easier._

Sherlock set his sights on his chair, which seemed approximately a mile away, and dragged himself to it by sheer force of will. When he finally reached it he dropped into the seat in a graceless sort of controlled fall, which jarred the fragile patchwork of his hipbones and hurt like hell.

Mrs. Hudson must have seen the sweat break out on his face, for she said, “I’m sure you’ll want to rest a bit now, so I’ll just leave you to it. I’m making your favorite dinner tonight, Sherlock, so we’ll have a little celebration, won’t we!” She fluttered off down the stairs and Sherlock closed his eyes in relief.

“I think I need a cuppa,” John announced, going into the kitchen and fiddling about with the kettle. Sherlock opened his eyes and peered after him. The kitchen seemed alarmingly tidy, and Sherlock felt a burst of miserable fury that he could not leap to his feet, stride in there, and make a terrific mess. Everything was out of place and strange, and it made him feel scared and shaky inside, and he _hated_ it. He just wanted everything in order, _his_ order, then he wouldn’t feel so wrong.

“I see you’ve tidied up the kitchen,” Sherlock said. It came out a little sharper than he meant to.

John looked up in surprise. He glanced around as though noticing the kitchen for the first time. “That wasn’t me, that was Mrs. Hudson,” he said. “Didn’t have much reason to get any of it back out, but I can do, if there’s an experiment you want.”

John was so reasonable that Sherlock felt more aggravated than ever. “I hope you’ve left my room alone at least,” he said crossly. “You can’t complain _that’s_ untidy. Did you mess up my sock index again?”

John looked at him a long moment, then turned as the kettle clicked off and moved about making the tea. That, at least, felt normal. Sherlock hunched a little and wished he could pull up his knees.

John came out, carrying two mugs, and placed one next to Sherlock before taking his own seat. He regarded Sherlock over the lip of his cup. “It’s okay,” he said finally. “I know it’s hard to come home. Been here before, remember? I know how you feel.”

“I don’t _feel_ anything,” Sherlock snapped.

“O-kay,” John said. “Maybe I don’t. Do you not want me to stay here? Did you get used to living alone again?”

“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I want you to stay; I can’t go to crime scenes, and I can hardly cook for myself like this.”

John actually burst out laughing. “Like you ever cooked for yourself before.”

“It’s not _funny_!” Sherlock shouted, suddenly horribly close to tears.

John sobered immediately. “I know, it’s really not. Please, Sherlock, help me out here. You don’t want me to leave.” He watched Sherlock’s face, nodded at whatever he saw there. “You want me to stay.”

This time Sherlock nodded.

John’s face softened all over. “Oh,” he said gently. “I see.”

See what? Sherlock wondered, worried.

“Sherlock, you love me, right?”

This was so far from what Sherlock expected John to say that he just opened his mouth and then left it there, gaping like a fish.

John nodded again as though Sherlock had actually answered. “I know you do. I’ve known since the wedding, really, but at the time…and then, well.” He spread his hands, smiling a little sadly. “It took seeing you in that rehab hospital, just giving up, to really get the picture. Because I’ve loved you forever, you know. Since the beginning, even though you said you were married to your work back then, and I thought I wasn’t really into blokes, and I thought you weren’t into…well . I always hoped, a little. But then when you were gone, I kind of gave up, and then…our timing is really shit, isn’t it?” He peered at Sherlock’s dumbstruck face. “Um, let’s be totally clear here. I’m talking about _in_ love, not some kind of, you know, movie bromance thing.”

Sherlock’s whirling brain settled on what seemed to him to be a crucial point. “But why didn’t you say?”

“Well, Christ, Sherlock. I thought if it was clear to me, you knew ages ago.”

Sherlock shook his head mutely.

“Yeah, getting that now. Sorry. When I said we were in this together—that’s what I meant. Together. Uh, I still don’t have any real idea of how much interest you have in, you know, the physical aspects of things—“

“Yes,” Sherlock said immediately. His heart was pounding.

“What?”

“Yes. Physical things.”

“Really?” John looked simultaneously delighted and astounded. Sherlock could practically see the “wait until I tell Greg” thought bubble bursting in his brain. “That’s—good. Really good. So can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said desperately. He had never done this before—the thought of it, years ago, had been frightening and he had promptly shoved it away in the _Ignore/Delete_ wing, like the solar system and the Mariana Trench. But this was John, and he loved John and John loved him. And so, kissing. He could at least try it.

John stood up with enthusiasm and then looked askance at where Sherlock sat trapped in his chair. Sherlock looked too. This was not going to work. “Can we go to my bed?” he asked. “That way you aren’t likely to fall into my lap.”

John snorted and then said, “If you’re sure.” He looked excited, and happy, and nervous.

“Why are _you_ nervous? I’m the one with no experience that can barely move at the hips.”

“Because it’s you, and I’m scared of messing it up somehow, and—wait, what? None?”

Sherlock could already tell that discussion was going to go nowhere good. “Saving myself for the right boy,” he said and pushed himself upright. John had been right, the upper body workouts were definitely paying off. He got his crutches situated and said “Come on. We’ve wasted all this time, why waste more?”

They got to the bedroom—thankfully as Sherlock remembered—and John thought to shut the door as Sherlock turned around and lowered himself to the bed. John kicked off his shoes and knelt to remove Sherlock’s, and Sherlock dropped his crutches and managed to get his own legs up on the bed, and then John knelt down next to him with the loveliest smile.

“Is this all right?” he asked, a little breathless. “Our first kiss, I—“

“Perfect,” Sherlock answered, not wanting John to get into any more discussion of first kisses, and he leaned forward and pressed his lips against John’s. He hoped he was doing it right.

John made a breathless sound and slid his hand into Sherlock’s hair, cupping the back of his head and opening his mouth against Sherlock’s. Oh right, people did that, he ought to remember from Janine but he had deleted most of that. He opened his mouth back and there was John’s tongue and—oh. All of a sudden it was crystal clear to Sherlock exactly why people liked this. He wanted more, all John’s kisses, John’s mouth on his forever and—what did he do with his hands again? John’s other arm went around Sherlock’s back and that made it easy; Sherlock slipped into John’s arms as though he had always belonged there and they wrapped against each other, kissing and kissing and kissing.

After a while Sherlock shifted a little and realized abruptly he was hard. The understanding of all that entailed swept over him like a wave and he gasped against John’s mouth.

“What is it? Am I hurting you?” John pulled back in alarm.

“No,” Sherlock said, trying to pull him back. “I want to have sex. With you. How do we do it? I can spread my legs but not kneel, not very well, maybe we could use some pillows—“

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” John said, already laughing. “Let’s not get carried away. I mean, do you even have—“

“Of course not, so what?” Sherlock said impatiently. “Come on, John, I’m a virgin and I got tested in rehab. Drug rehab, I mean, obviously. You haven’t been with anybody since Mary and she would have been tested for everything under the sun when she got pregnant.”

“Uh, yeah. Actually I was thinking more of lubricant. Heard of it? It’s going to be kind of essential if you want me to bend you over a pile of pillows, which we are not doing today anyway, by the way.”

Sherlock pulled a pillow over his face and growled into it. “I’ve never wanted anybody in my life,” he said into it, muffled. “And now I want you so much I can’t stand it and you are just going to _sit there_.”

“I never said I was going to sit here,” John said, and he yanked off Sherlock’s trousers.

Sherlock yelped and pawed at the pillow, which John shoved off so he could smile down at him. “Lie still,” he said. “The last thing we need is you hurting yourself and ending up back in hospital.”

“I’m fine,” Sherlock protested, which was mostly true, but then John leaned over and kissed him again and Sherlock forgot all about what he was going to say.

John kissed him and kissed him and worked his pants off, a little more carefully since they weren’t as loose as the trousers, and then he touched him, and then he licked his hand and touched him, which almost made Sherlock cry with pleasure—it had just been so long since anything felt _good._ Then John lay on his side alongside Sherlock and kissed him and touched him at the same time, which made Sherlock cry out and whimper and tighten his hips until they ached and finally ejaculate in a stunningly explosive orgasm, which hadn’t happened to Sherlock in about twenty years.

Afterward Sherlock lay limp and blissed out as John cleaned him up with a wet flannel and then kissed him thoroughly.

“You have to teach me how to do that to you,” Sherlock said woozily. Sex was better than morphine; he hardly hurt at all right now.

“All in good time,” John said gently. “Right now I think you need a nap.”

“I want you to sleep here with me tonight. Every night.”

“What if I kick? I’m a restless sleeper. I could hurt you.” John looked worried.

Sherlock shrugged. “Then you hurt me. I won’t break. Maybe I’ll kick back. Maybe I’ll yell at you and wake you up and you’ll yell at me and call me a rude git for waking you up.” John still looked worried so Sherlock said, “I tried everything I could to keep you safe, and look what happened—I broke your heart, twice.”

“The second time wasn’t your fault,” John said fairly.

“Still, the point remains. I spent most of my life trying to control things I couldn’t, and look how _that_ turned out. I want you here with me. Not because I’m scared you will leave, or because I want you to get up and make me tea in the middle of the night—although I’m not saying that won’t happen—but because I want you. With me. All the time.”

John smiled down at him and kissed him gently. “Sometimes I forget how clever you are.”

“Well, we won’t let that happen again.” Sherlock yawned.

John pulled Sherlock’s pants back on and draped a blanket over him. “Sleep,” he said. “You’ve got a long way to go yet before you go back to dashing around alleys and having mad pillow sex. You need your rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

And he was.

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Observe, Control, Delete](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4429589) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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